French Passion

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “Auntie, Auntie!” I cried.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I’ve been expecting something like this, planning for it. Manon, don’t worry. I’ll hire someone, no matter what the cost, to bring you food and whatever you need. I’ll find someone who’s had the smallpox already. They say those who’ve had it don’t get it again.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now listen to me. This is important. You know Madame Joliot?”

  I nodded, wondering where this would lead. Madame Joliot was exactly like Aunt Thérèse. Stout. Conventional. Given to fainting. And very kind.

  “Well, Madame Joliot was head governess to the children of the Duke of Orléans. During the smallpox epidemic of seventy-three, the Duke and his family were inoculated. And so was Madame Joliot.”

  I stared up through the rain at her. “In—what? Is that a cure?”

  Aunt Thérèse shook her capped head. “There is no cure for the smallpox, and they say there never will be. This inoculation is a method of prevention. Or so Madame Joliot told me. It has dangers, but, she says, it’s far less dangerous than the disease. Most of the Duke of Orleans’ servants contracted the smallpox. Neither she nor his family did.”

  “Do you know how it’s done?”

  “Madame Joliot told me. Listen carefully.”

  And she held out a piece of paper, reading instructions, then she dropped the sheet and I ran to get it before rain smudged the ink.

  “Auntie,” I called up, “if anything … anything happens to me, promise you’ll be as good and kind to CoCo as you were to Jean-Pierre and me?”

  At this she began to weep. “Manon, this is all my fault. If I’d been firmer with you, you’d have been submissive. You would have obeyed the Comte. And—”

  “Aunt Thérèse,” I interrupted, “there’s nobody else in the whole world that I want raising my CoCo except you.”

  She was weeping too hard to speak.

  “Give CoCo a big hug and kiss,” I called, and then tears were streaming down my rain-wet cheeks, too.

  Aunt Thérèse must have sent immediately for the charnel wagon. No sooner had I brought in the soup and linen than two ragged, rough-looking men with kerchiefs over their faces banged loudly on the door. Unceremoniously each grabbed a wasted leg, thumping the frail, rigid corpse along the wet path. Izette, thank God, still tossed in delirium.

  Before cleaning up the shed, I inoculated myself according to Aunt Thérèse’s instructions.

  Holding a needle over the candle flame, I waited until the point blackened. This step was easy. The next was impossible. “You must,” I told myself aloud. “You must do it.” And I bent over Izette’s cot. She’d fallen into a stupor. By the light of the candle, I searched her face and chest, finding what I needed. A broken blister, oozing. I dipped in the needle, coating its blackened point with pus. Pulling up my sleeve, I quickly jabbed the point into the flesh of my upper arm, barely drawing blood. My revulsion was so great that sweat drenched me. Again I dipped the needle, again I pricked. What was I doing? Forget Madame Joliot and the entire family of the Duke of Orléans! How could this prevent the smallpox? Didn’t it seem far more likely I’d just infected myself? Yet I continued until a coin-sized circle of red drops marked my flesh, then I sat on the hard-packed dirt floor, shuddering, burying my face in my hands.

  After a few minutes I looked around. Izette must’ve been stricken quite a few days without telling me. Normally clean, fastidiously neat, she’d let the toolshed go to filth. The slop pail overflowed. A mouse had gnawed its shape through a loaf of bread.

  I swept, lugged the slop pail to the cesspit, changed Izette’s body and bed linen, smoothed her pustules with the unguent the apothecary had sent for Joseph. I sponged her face with cool water, using more unguent. Then I turned my attention to Joseph’s cot, stripping all the coverings, taking them outside, touching them with the candle. The rain kept dousing the fire, and burning took a long time.

  Inside, Izette was awake and coherent.

  “Oh, ma’am,” she whispered. “You mustn’t be here.”

  “I already am.”

  “It ain’t worth it. I’m going to die anyway.”

  “Stop being silly.”

  “I want to die, now Joseph is gone.…” Small, odd-shaped tears oozed down her blistered cheeks. When she stopped crying, I fed her a little beef soup. Finally she slept.

  Night had fallen. Wearily I put fresh coverings on the other cot. No exaltation raised me, no sense of doing a mercy. I felt only staggering guilt. If this inoculation thing didn’t work, and infected me, then what? A third are horribly disfigured, the Comte had said. But what if I died? Left CoCo an orphan?

  Without me, how would she survive? I remembered, too vividly, that night I’d run from the Comte’s palace, those two starving children foraging through an offal heap. If I died, would the Comte support a bastard that might or might not be his? He never plays with her, I thought as I stretched out. And understood what he’d told me at the beginning. I should’ve lied through my teeth that she was his.

  I woke in cold darkness. Izette was shouting wildly. “Men! Men! All ugliness!”

  I thought of the starving children and the Comte’s lack of affection for CoCo and began to cry.

  The porter Aunt Thérèse had hired left hot meals, medicine, candles, fresh linens on the path. One morning he left two letters. I read Jean-Pierre’s first.

  Dear Little Sister,

  How I yearn to be with you in your difficult time! Alas, the unrest in Paris has worsened. Revolutionaries have persuaded decent artisans, at this time unemployed, that their lack of work is the fault of the government. They stand outside shops of their former employers, threateningly. Sometimes they read verses written by a poet who calls himself Égalité. These poems are the usual inflammatory stuff of pamphleteers, and King Louis fears a rebellion like that against the British in the Americas. Therefore you can see that duty to King and country keeps me with the Royal Guard, here at Versailles.

  Aunt Thérèse has told me what you are doing. I know how fond you are of Izette, and how generously you give of yourself. However, had I been with you, I should have forbidden such recklessness.

  I love you too much to have permitted you to expose yourself to the dread disease.

  But, Little Sister, know that all my prayers and love are with you.

  Jean-Pierre d’Epinay

  (Captain, Royal Guard)

  I folded the paper, relieved that Jean-Pierre hadn’t come home. He’d always been susceptible to fevers, and his being at Versailles Palace was one weight off my mind.

  I unsealed the other letter.

  My dear,

  This is to let you know I remain in England on the King’s business.

  Your aunt has written to me of your actions. I cannot control my anger.

  de C

  He’d written to explain his absence, but couldn’t he have kept his anger to himself? These days I was always near tears.

  Aunt Thérèse asked our doctor to write down the course of the smallpox. Izette followed the stages closely. After I’d been in the toolshed two days, her blisters were broken pustules, and in another four days these crusted over. The scabs itched terribly. She couldn’t restrain herself from scratching. Some scabs she tore off, others fell off. In either case it was the same thing. Ugly pink scars that after ten days marked her face, neck, breasts, torso.

  Her fever abated.

  The scabs off, according to the doctor’s notes, she was no longer contagious. We stayed four days after the last scab fell.

  She was still very weak. Slowly we started out of the shed. The drab nursemaid’s garb hung, but even in its loose gray, her tall body somehow managed to hint of the old voluptuous curves.

  Her face, mounded like the crust of badly baked bread, was a vivid pink. According to the doctor, in time these scars would fade. Bright or faded, the pockmarks were a terrible disfigurement.

  At the stables, she paused.
<
br />   “Ma’am, there ain’t no way to pay for life. And I owe you not just what you done for me, but how you was with Joseph.”

  I gripped her hand. “Stop it!”

  “Don’t worry, I ain’t getting sloppy. I’m plain, you know that. It ain’t what you did for me, ma’am, it’s how you always was to my brother. Taking him in, feeding him, getting him them crutches so he didn’t have to crawl like an animal. Teaching him his letters—and such pleasure he got from books! Keeping him from Hôtel-Dieu. There ain’t another person in Paris that would’ve done any of it, especially not sending him to that … hell. From here on in, my life is yours. If you need anything, even murder, I’ll do it for you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It’s unhealthy, most say, to shampoo. But I washed my hair daily when I soaked in my copper tub. I felt sure I had rid myself of any contagion. And still I waited two full weeks before letting myself go in to CoCo.

  She was making rumbling noises in her throat as she pushed a toy carriage the Comte had given her across the nursery rug. As the door opened, she looked up. Hungrily I stared at the small firm body, the shining pale cloud of curls. One of her white stockings drooped at the ankle. I went over to straighten it.

  “No,” she said, raising her small chin.

  “Yes.”

  “No! No!” Her very light brows drew together as if she were about to erupt into one of her small rages. “No!”

  “Mama wants to straighten your stocking, that’s all.”

  “Mama leave CoCo!”

  “But I’m back again. Oh, baby, I’m back.”

  “Mama stay?”

  “Oh, yes. Always. Give me a big kiss, CoCo. Give your poor tired Mama a great big kiss.”

  At this she put both arms around my neck, and I was hugging the small body, weeping incoherently. The peculiar rite of innoculation had been so repugnant that my mind blocked the use of it for CoCo.

  The strikes weren’t over yet, Jean-Pierre wrote from Versailles, so he must remain with the Royal Guard. And I got a note from the Comte that the King’s business moved slowly, keeping him in London. There was no thought of holding my Friday soirées. The smallpox epidemic, no longer secret, raged through Paris, terrifying people into seclusion.

  Not that I wanted company. My joy at being reunited with my child made every moment away from her a nag, a bother. Evenings I sewed with Aunt Thérèse, or sat with Izette. Izette, long past the stage of infecting anyone, stayed in her room, mourning her brother.

  I’d climb up to her attic, trying to raise her spirits. “You’ll have to get back to work,” I scolded. “I’m worn out tending CoCo.”

  At this the old smile briefly split the pocked face. “If that ain’t the biggest lie ever!”

  “I just can’t get enough of her,” I admitted. “But come on down with me to look in on her.”

  It was Izette who first saw the little red dots on CoCo’s plump neck.

  The doctor came immediately, the same doctor who’d been too night-weary to visit servants was not too tired for the “ward” of the Comte de Créqui. He stood over the cradle, his black robes frightening my baby, telling me what I already knew.

  “The smallpox,” he said. “I’ll send the sisters to nurse her.”

  “I’ll nurse her,” I said. “And I expect you every morning.”

  He blanched.

  “You’ll be here at ten,” I commanded, using the Comte’s most haughty tone.

  Later, the mornings blurred with the afternoons, and the nights blurred with the days, and there was only the bewildered wailing of a little girl unused to pain. Fevers rose and fell in her. She had very few pocks and these itched her intolerably. I cut her nails to the quick and held her small, flailing hands so she couldn’t mark herself with scratches. Izette and I set up cots in the nursery, spelling each other. I cannot remember sleeping, yet I suppose I must have. That week, I suppose, I slept.

  It was after midnight, when illness worsens and death stands waiting. CoCo tossed in her brass cradle, her lips pressed on her battered gold locket. She’d insisted on keeping it with her during her illness. Lightheaded with weariness, I sat next to her, watching, wondering if she somehow knew it was the Comte’s first gift to her and for this reason she held on to it. Was her need for the locket the sign that she was the Comte’s child?

  In a towel-covered bowl at my feet was some ice that the fat cook had managed to buy, though God knows how, after this hot summer and autumn.

  CoCo’s hair, darkened with sweat, clung to her head, and her closed eyes were sunk in two lavender circles. The rest of her face was so red with fever that the pock-marks barely showed. The sight of her transfixed me with guilt. For in the deepest recesses of my soul, I knew the Comte was right. My first responsibility had been not to infect my child.

  The door opened quietly and Izette came in, holding her skirts to keep them from rustling. We glanced at each other, she nodding toward my cot. I shook my head, no.

  The nursery swam with shadows, and my head jerked forward.

  I couldn’t have slept more than five minutes. When I woke, Izette was bent over the cradle, sponging CoCo.

  “The fever shot up suddenlike. She’s convulsing.”

  I reached frantically for the rigid, quaking little body, holding her in my lap, moving towel-wrapped ice everywhere on her face and plump torso. CoCo wailed a feeble protest. I didn’t stop. Please, God, she’s only got seven teeth—no, there’s the new one, I prayed as I sponged ice on her, she’s only got eight teeth. Let her be all right.

  Izette gathered dirty linens from the cradle, and put on fresh.

  CoCo stopped wailing. She smiled, showing her teeth. “Mama,” she whispered. I touched my lips to her forehead. It felt cooler. She snuggled against my breasts, giving a little sigh. The convulsions stopped, and she was still. Dropping the ice back in the bowl, I wrapped her in a shawl.

  “Izette,” I whispered, “the fever’s broken. She’s going to be all right.”

  We smiled at each other over CoCo, our eyes shining. I stayed in the low chair, rocking the baby. The kind of joy that comes only once or twice in a lifetime filled me. After a few minutes Izette came to take CoCo.

  She pulled back, then said, “Oh, Manon, my poor Manon.…”

  CoCo was no longer moving at all. My mind blocked the knowledge. “She’s sleeping,” I said. “She’s better.”

  Izette’s face twisted into a scarred mask. Her mouth and chin trembled.

  “She’s better,” I repeated.

  “Yes, much better,” Izette said. “Let me take her.”

  “No.” I gripped the small body tighter.

  “I’ll put her in the cradle.” Izette’s arms went around my shoulders. “Let me?”

  “No.” I was whimpering a little. “As long as I hold her she’ll be better.”

  I was still holding CoCo when paleness showed at the windows and Izette opened the curtains. A flight of sparrows whirled around the church steeple. Their wings turned to thin curves as they rose upward into the dawn. I was remembering.

  “Here, let me take her,” Izette said. Her voice shook with sobs. Izette had loved and lost her pale, crippled brother. Izette had loved and lost CoCo.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  I remembered the midwife holding up the squirming red baby with the funny bald head. That had been sixteen months ago. Sixteen months is so little time, and yet so much time. Enough to learn to walk and say words and cut eight teeth. Not long enough to learn fear. CoCo never was afraid. Remember the small, imperious lift of chin. Remember her reaching for gilt buttons. Remember her holding up her arms to the Comte, never learning he wouldn’t pick her up. Remember the laughter as she explored the Tuileries Gardens. Yes, remember.

  “Manon, it has to be done.”

  “Later.”

  I hadn’t wept, and I didn’t think I would ever weep. There was a pain that held my body tight, as if my blood had turned to lead, and I decided I’d never be able t
o walk or talk or weep again. It’s a law of nature … I suggest you don’t tamper with the natural order, the Comte had said. I had done what seemed to me inevitable, and in the doing, had tampered with some immutable laws concerning the human estate. For this, CoCo had been punished. I knew in some timeless place where I’d never been before that I never would, never could forgive myself. My pain never would heal. I never again would be complete. Always I would carry this guilt wedged in my heart.

  Izette took the small body from me. My eyes were dry.

  That evening Aunt Thérèse came into the nursery. I sat by the small, closed white coffin in which CoCo already lay. Aunt Thérèse’s wrinkles were blotched with tears. She’d wept all day. I’d listened to those sobs with numb envy.

  “The priest just left.” She put her handkerchief to her eyes. “CoCo must be buried in potter’s field.”

  I looked up. “A pauper’s burial?”

  “It’s the law for victims of the smallpox,” she said with a sob. “To prevent infections.”

  “Prevent the rich from catching it,” I said tonelessly.

  “What?”

  “She’s gone. What does it matter?”

  “Oh, Manon, how I wish Jean-Pierre or the Comte were with us. They’d know what to do.”

  The Comte remained in England. Jean-Pierre’s regiment was still on duty.

  “There’s nothing to be done,” I said.

  It had rained. Clouds sagged like wet purple coverlets as if it would rain again, Around the mass grave stood ragged mourners in small groups, generally two people, sometimes three, never more.

  Izette and I were alone. Aunt Thérèse, just as we were about to leave, had collapsed into a dead faint. Much as the servants had loved CoCo, they’d been terrified to come to this place. My friends who visited on Friday nights had sent graceful notes of condolence, excusing themselves with a variety of reasons from the funeral rites. As if it mattered.

  Gravediggers unceremoniously lowered shrouded bodies, eleven of them. I counted. This, I thought numbly, is how Joseph was buried. Maybe in that grassless patch over there.

  I watched a cheap pine box descend, and then the gravediggers easily handed down the small white coffin. CoCo, who had loved the sunshine, loved gilt buttons and her battered gold locket, loved everything bright and beautiful. What an awful grim place this was. Even grass didn’t grow properly.